wopphil

If it helps bring a smile to your face, my friend sent this to me yesterday. 

If it helps bring a smile to your face, my friend sent this to me yesterday. 

If it helps bring a smile to your face, my friend sent this to me yesterday. 

If it helps bring a smile to your face, my friend sent this to me yesterday. 

If it helps bring a smile to your face, my friend sent this to me yesterday. 

You have to love that Larry acts badass like we all weren’t here for his panic attacks in January.  It’s ballsy. 

He will show up in 2024. 

He will show up in 2024. 

He will show up in 2024. 

He will show up in 2024. 

My Top 30 is dramatically different from start of season. 
That’s not a good thing.
i haven’t been this pessimistic regarding the org - majors and minors - in oh, 7-10 years. It’s bad folks.
Can the FO, can the coaching staff, throw all the money you can at poaching execs from Tampa, Oakland or the Dodgers (but give one guy/girl clear and decisive authority), make a handful of ballsy, creative Oakland/Tampa-esque trades (Walsh, Sandoval, Adell/Marsh/Detmers), tell Arte to chill and count his money, invest so much in the farm you become the model every org looks up to, and spend in the FA mid-tier (within reason) instead of only going cheap/mega-stars/rebounds and don’t be afraid to trade those guys if they’re having a decent year. Run this out for a year or two and and hope it all coalesces around 2025. 

Should be Perry. You could make an argument that both the MLB team and the farm have somehow gotten worse since he came on board. 
But still not the problem. Org needs an overhaul, and really that will only happen if Arte sells or accepts a radically different approach to the autonomy, structure, and budget that's been adhered to to date.
Eppler was still the closest we've had to a true GM going back to Stoneman. I'll even give Dipoto a little credit there (thought I still disagree with a lot of his approach). , 
Next time Arte hires a GM, he needs to step back, hire a primed and ready no-brainer GM candidate or poach a successful one from another club and let them reform every aspect of the team, be it putting the minor leaguers up in mansions, spending $300m on payroll for a couple years to buy prospects like the Dodgers did, signing mid-tier FAs without caution, or rebuilding from the ground up, whatever that candidate feels is best. Handicapping the talent we bring into the FO isn't doing anyone any favors.

Once upon a time...
a 97 win Angels team lost in the ALCS to the Yankees in 2009.  
Actually, lets go way way back to 2003 when Arte took over.  
Or how about a little further back to the days of Bavasi and Stoneman?  
Drafting and developing became the cornerstone of this franchise.  They lived off the hard work of that for several years from previous regimes until 2009 but the infrastructure was essentially dismantled from the word go once Arte took over.  The complementary pieces around that were actually pretty functional early on.  Vlad, Hunter, Abreu.  
And then came some really poor choices couple with that loss of infrastructure.  Trying use dip spit and elmers and duct tape to hold it together.  Like Haren, Matsui, Wells.  Not all of them were horrible choices but it was a clear departure from what made them successful for those previous years.  
But then the real pain came.  Mike Trout.  HAHA!  Yeah.  Whoa!  Seriously?  
Yep.  They really started to get in wrong when they went down the rabbit's hole of realizing he was a generational player and the obligation they felt, they have felt, to make use of that.  In no way, shape or form is that Mike's fault.  They just did a miserable job of identifying how to do what need to be done in order to take advantage of him.  
by the time he showed up they had already started to completely ignore the things that worked for them in the past.  And then they doubled down on that.  But the funny thing is they didn't have to do that.  Albert?  Ok.  Pair him with another generational player.  Terrible contract.  But where did the farm go?  Oh yeah.  No latin america.  Low ceiling college players who 'theoretically' would be quick to he bigs and help.  
I have to wonder where we'd be right now if they had still paid appropriate attention to the drafting and developing back in 2013.  
All the while the leadership structure is probably the most unconventional of any team in baseball.  Gm gets let go.  New GM didn't hire manager.  Another new GM who didn't hire the manager.  GM quits mid year.  Another new GM who didn't hire the manager.  Manager finally leaves.  GM hires new manager who lasts one year.  Owner hires a new manager.  GM is let go.  New GM inherits manager.  Manager is let go.  That seems like it would work.  Right?  Over an 8 year span?  4 managers and 3 gms.  Only one manager of which was chosen by the gm.  For one year.  Seems stable to me.  
So who's to blame?  Is it Arte?  Carpino?  Someone else?  It's like four or five layers of doubling down on bad decisions.  When are they gonna break the chain?  

@wopphil?

I once spoke with a high ranking member of the Angels front office, and he and I were talking about CJ Cron at the time. And I'll never forget what he told me. "If a prospect plays well enough in AAA, he's never blocked. We'll create an avenue for that playing time, or better yet his bat will."
If Adell's bat was that legit, he'd be in the lineup, everyday. 

Do you guys actually watch the games or look at the box scores?  Forget what Fangraphs says, this team is doing literally nothing correctly the last month. They aren’t making the playoffs, and almost certainly aren’t going to finish .500 (for what, the seventh year in a row?). 

Do you guys actually watch the games or look at the box scores?  Forget what Fangraphs says, this team is doing literally nothing correctly the last month. They aren’t making the playoffs, and almost certainly aren’t going to finish .500 (for what, the seventh year in a row?). 

Do you guys actually watch the games or look at the box scores?  Forget what Fangraphs says, this team is doing literally nothing correctly the last month. They aren’t making the playoffs, and almost certainly aren’t going to finish .500 (for what, the seventh year in a row?). 

Weren’t those nice times? When a good president could get impeached for lying about sex. Now, you can commit treason and try to make yourself a dictator, and the party doesn’t find that nearly as repugnant as banging an intern. 

I think the #1 reason for keeping Adell is we have no guarantee that Ohtani will be the full time DH after next year.
Ohtani leaving would open the door to have Trout, Rendon and others rotate through the DH spot.  This creates more opportunities for the 4th OFer.
The last thing we should want to see is MIFers routinely playing in the OF.

This was my thought exactly. I keep refreshing MLB trade rumors expecting to read that he has been fired. 

This was my thought exactly. I keep refreshing MLB trade rumors expecting to read that he has been fired. 

I actually did well in Con Law in law school (can’t say that about most of my other classes), but don’t follow it now nearly as much as I should. Employment law is my thing. Cals could probably school me on the Constitution. 

They fucking suck. The bullpen is complete dogshit, like every year. I’ll believe they are a playoff contender when they are actually contending in September.